My Experiments, My Insanity

[JacktardBrewmeister]

Sorry I have not posted in QUITE a while, but I have been really busy with work... and brewing.... and drinking. I brewed a barleywine to 26.6% I call The Jacktardius Maximus. It is my pride and joy, but that stays in my vault for now.

My itinerary is pretty massive going forward in brewing this year coming up (especially in summer) as I plan to experiment the crap out of some beer ideas and wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions and I will post each experiment as I do it.

First of all, my dealings with beer gas. Not sure how to conserve beer gas as I have been burning through it really fast. New seals on keg and no leaks either. I have been struggling to find a way to reduce beer gas expense on my nitro system from turning the gas off (only turning it back on every serving time, to actively putting the keg on CO2 at only a few psi between serving times. Out of sheer curiosity has anyone else tried various methods to conserve their beer gas.

Ok, so my experimental plans are really as follows

Lime Hefe with matcha green tea (was supposed to be ready for Halloween but due to... the shutdown so to say, it is still racked and the green tea portion is only getting added when I go to keg. I should have this beer on tap by Xmas.

I am doing a SMASH beer run with Marris Otter as my base malt (I really like this base malt... FIGHT ME!!!). I received 50 lbs of various hops pellets from a friend of mine who lost his brewery due to the pandemic. I also got 3 lbs of Safbrew S-04. I thought long and hard on how to play with all these hops and use all this yeast and I thought to myself... With all this stuff, I should do a legit SMASH beer tour. I got 50 lbs of various hops (Idaho 7, Mandarina Bavaria (got 10 lbs of this), Cascade, Zeus, Belma, Citra, Golena.... I have three hops that are experimental... the list goes on. I am thinking of gunning for the same amount of ounces used in each of my 5 gallon beer batches (probably 2 oz for 60 minutes of boil) and dry hopping with 3oz and tasting daily before kegging and serving. I also have about and addition 5 lbs sorted of Cryo Hops as well that was also given to me so I might practice dry hopping with those first.

Anywho, not sure if feedback on these experiments would interest anyone here but I thought I'd share since this is really the only community I like spending time with/sharing my ideas.

 

[day_trippr]

On the beer gas thing, need some context: how many gallons of beer do you manage to dispense with whatever cylinder size you have?

fwiw, I've been keeping an imperial chocolate stout on 70/30 beer gas continuously for over a decade (it's my 100% gotta have - I'd forsake everything else if that's what it took to keep this one on tap ) I go through ~20 gallons of it annually, and fill my 40cf cylinder every other year.

If you're not getting roughly that ratio of dispensed beer vs gas volume used I would suspect a leak...

Cheers!

 

[doug293cz]

...

First of all, my dealings with beer gas. Not sure how to conserve beer gas as I have been burning through it really fast. New seals on keg and no leaks either. I have been struggling to find a way to reduce beer gas expense on my nitro system from turning the gas off (only turning it back on every serving time, to actively putting the keg on CO2 at only a few psi between serving times. Out of sheer curiosity has anyone else tried various methods to conserve their beer gas.

...

If you vent the headspace of beer gas, and then drop to a few psi, of CO2, you are wasting all of the beer gas that was in the headspace.

Try turning off the gas at the cylinder (after the beer has equilibrated with the gas) and watching the pressure gauge over a few days. It the pressure drops, you have a leak somewhere.

Brew on

 

[JacktardBrewmeister]

Thanks for the advice, Ill keep you guys updated .

 

[Vale71]

First of all, my dealings with beer gas. Not sure how to conserve beer gas as I have been burning through it really fast. New seals on keg and no leaks either. I have been struggling to find a way to reduce beer gas expense on my nitro system from turning the gas off (only turning it back on every serving time, to actively putting the keg on CO2 at only a few psi between serving times. Out of sheer curiosity has anyone else tried various methods to conserve their beer gas.

Avoid leaks. If you system has no leaks then I'm afraid the only way to conserve beer gas is to drink less...